ANALYSIS OF FOOD SECURITY STATUS OF FARMING HOUSEHOLDS IN WUKARI LGA, TARABA STATE, NIGERIA

The study analyzed the food security status of farming households in Wukari LGA, Taraba State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of the farming household’s heads on food security; determine the food security status of the farming households; and to describe the copping strategies adopted by the farming households. Data were collected from 114 farming households through questionnaire and were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Food Security Index (FSI) estimation. Descriptive analysis of socioeconomic characteristics of the sampled households revealed that respondents had average household size of 10 persons with a sizeable proportion of household heads (36.0%) within the age category of 41-50 years, while 21.1 and 18.4% were in the age categories of 31 40 and 51-60 years, respectively. Similarly, 52.0% of the household heads had no formal education while 71.9% earned ≤50,000 naira per capita per year. The summary statistics of food security indices among the sampled households showed that majority (52.63%) of the farming households were food insecure with about 42% short of calorie availability to achieve the basic minimal calorie requirement of 2,730 kcal/day/person. Coping strategies such as ‘reducing number of meals per day’, ‘restriction of consumption by adults to feed the children’, limit meal portion at meal time’ and ‘reliance on the use of less preferred and expensive food’ were the commonly used coping strategies by the stressed households in the study area. The study concluded that household heads’ socioeconomic characteristics such as household size, educational attainment of the household head, and household income generation have influence on the food security of the household and that farming households were food insecure with about 42% short of calorie availability. Households in the study area employed various coping strategies to attenuate the effect of food insecurity. Thus, the study recommended that farming households be provided with more educational opportunities and farm extension services to improve upon their food security status. The household heads should be encouraged to save more in order to increase/improve their capital base and invest it in the business to enjoy economies of scale. Deployment of concerted efforts such as farm inputs subsidy and distribution of palliatives as coping options by government and concerned stakeholders should be made to bring such segment out of food insecurity